What are the odds.

 

Lost keys hung on a branch. It's not uncommon to see dropped items visibly displayed on the sides of tracks by good folk in the hope that they and their owners might be reunited. Though these keys are not on a well worn path or track these are hung on a very random low branch in a block of anonymous mixed woodland of varying density, with no paths to speak of beyond ephemeral wildlife  tracks. Losing things is easy, too easy, and losing your keys, well, that almost a cliché. What are the odds though of someone finding them, the floor and understory of this block are wild and unkempt, an environment that stacks the odds in losses favour. Then. What are the chances of me whilst wandering in the same pathless woodland finding them hanging there. The good Samaritan must be a true believer. The ring is rusting well, so I'm going to suggest they've hung here a while. Un-retrieved. Made me think. Because I never see others when wandering off piste, I imagine, or assume, no one else walks where I walk. Taking into account that evidence suggests people must, what are the odds of us all passing that apparently very random anonymous spot.

Still there!

Wow, the discarded running shoes I commented on at the beginning of the month are still there! Very odd indeed; surely they'd have been returned for.

How queer!

 

What appear a serviceable, if not good nick, pair of Evadict mt2 trail running shoes (About £80) discarded in the forest; not near a car park, or on a track or anywhere else you could envisage changing then forgetting/losing your shoes, but on the edge wet heathland/bogland at the base of Markway Hill near Stag Brake. How queer. I can't imagine the story here; why they would've been abandoned is beyond me. Another forest mystery.

And breath..

I'm always amazed by the things I find whilst out walking. Whilst sheltering under a Holly, I noticed what appeared to be a shiny disk amongst the leaf litter. Upon reaching down and clearing some of the leaves, I was surprised to find an inhaler of the kind I use for my asthma. The inhaler appears to have been placed purposefully, rather than having been dropped by accident, as it's sticking out of the ground upright (2 3rds of it buried). That wouldn't happen naturally. Why then would you part bury an asthma inhaler upright under a tree?  Being a pagan I'm used to the idea of ritual deposition, is this something like that? A mad idea that this is what's happening here, I know. Still. Does it hold symbolism for the person who put it there? It must. As I say, it appears purposeful, rather than accidental. Maybe the Holly suffers from asthma? I'll never know, and I'll have to chalk it up to 'another' woodland mystery.